Communicating Climate Change in Russia

State and Propaganda

Marianna Poberezhskaya

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317565994
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Studi regionali

The attitude of Russia towards climate change is extremely important for the success of climate change control policies worldwide, as Russia, with its cold climate and vast resources of carbon fuels, is one of the world's biggest polluters. Moreover, Russia frequently comes across as not being very interested in containing environmental pollution. This book explores how issues to do with climate change are handled by the Russian media. It discusses how the state and economic elites have influenced Russia's environmental communication, with the state's control of the media strengthening since Putin came to power, and with control being exercised in some cases by ignoring or silencing the key issues. However, the book also shows how, recently, elites and the state in Russia have begun to realise that it is in the state's best interest to pursue more climate-oriented policies. The book concludes by examining how the communication of climate change issues in Russia could be improved and by assessing the extent to which a recent change in state climate policy could mean that media coverage of climate change in Russia will keep increasing.

BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies

Series editor: Richard Sakwa

Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent

Editorial Committee:

Roy Allison, St Antony’s College, Oxford

Birgit Beumers, Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies, University of Aberystwyth

Richard Connolly, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham

Terry Cox, Department of Central and East European Studies, University of Glasgow

Peter Duncan, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London

Zoe Knox, School of History, University of Leicester

Rosalind Marsh, Department of European Studies and Modern Languages, University of Bath

David Moon, Department of History, University of York

Hilary Pilkington, Department of Sociology, University of Manchester

Graham Timmins, Department of Politics, University of Birmingham

Stephen White, Department of Politics, University of Glasgow

Founding Editorial Committee Member:

George Blazyca, Centre for Contemporary European Studies, University of Paisley

This series is published on behalf of BASEES (the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies). The series comprises original, high-quality, research-level work by both new and established scholars on all aspects of Russian, Soviet, post-Soviet and East European Studies in humanities and social science subjects.

1. Ukraine’s Foreign and Security Policy, 1991–2000
   Roman Wolczuk
2. Political Parties in the Russian Regions
   Derek S. Hutcheson
3. Local Communities and Post-Communist Transformation
   Edited by Simon Smith
4. Repression and Resistance in Communist Europe
   J.C. Sharman
5. Political Elites and the New Russia
   Anton Steen
6. Dostoevsky and the Idea of Russianness
   Sarah Hudspith
7. Performing Russia – Folk Revival and Russian Identity
   Laura J. Olson
8. Russian Transformations
   Edited by Leo McCann
9. Soviet Music and Society under Lenin and Stalin
   The baton and sickle
   Edited by Neil Edmunds
10. State Building in Ukraine
    The Ukrainian parliament, 1990–2003
    Sarah Whitmore
11. Defending Human Rights in Russia
    Sergei Kovalyov, dissident and Human Rights Commissioner, 1969–2003
    Emma Gilligan
12. Small-Town Russia
    Postcommunist livelihoods and identities: a portrait of the Intelligentsia in Achit, Bednodemyanovsk and Zubtsov, 1999–2000
    Anne White
13. Russian Society and the Orthodox Church
    Religion in Russia after Communism
    Zoe Knox
14. Russian Literary Culture in the Camera Age
    The word as image
    Stephen Hutchings
15. Between Stalin and Hitler
    Class war and race war on the Dvina, 1940–46
    Geoffrey Swain
16. Literature in Post-Communist Russia and Eastern Europe
    The Russian, Czech and Slovak fiction of the changes, 1988–98
    Rajendra A. Chitnis
17. The Legacy of Soviet Dissent
    Dissidents, democratisation and radical nationalism in Russia
    Robert Horvath
18. Russian and Soviet Film Adaptations of Literature, 1900–2001
    Screening the word
    Edited by Stephen Hutchings and Anat Vernitski
19. Russia as a Great Power
    Dimensions of security under Putin
    Edited by Jakob Hedenskog, Vilhelm Konnander, Bertil Nygren, Ingmar Oldberg and Christer Pursiainen
20. Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940
    Truth, justice and memory
    George Sanford
21. Conscience, Dissent and Reform in Soviet Russia
    Philip Boobbyer
22. The Limits of Russian Democratisation
    Emergency powers and states of emergency
    Alexander N. Domrin
23. The Dilemmas of Destalinisation
    A social and cultural history of reform in the Khrushchev era
    Edited by Polly Jones
24. News Media and Power in Russia
    Olessia Koltsova
25. Post-Soviet Civil Society
    Democratization in Russia and the Baltic States
    Anders Uhlin
26. The Collapse of Communist Power in Poland
    Jacqueline Hayden
27. Television, Democracy and Elections in Russia
    Sarah Oates
28. Russian Constitutionalism
    Historical and contemporary development
    Andrey N. Medushevsky
29. Late Stalinist Russia
    Society between reconstruction and reinvention
    Edited by Juliane Fürst
30. The Transformation of Urban Space in Post-Soviet Russia
    Konstantin Axenov, Isolde Brade and Evgenij Bondarchuk
31. Western Intellectuals and the Soviet Union, 1920–40
    From Red Square to the Left Bank
    Ludmila Stern
32. The Germans of the Soviet Union
    Irina Mukhina
33. Re-constructing the Post-Soviet Industrial Region
    The Donbas in transition
    Edited by Adam Swain
34. Chechnya – Russia’s “War on Terror” ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Frontmatter 1
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Illustrations
• Abbreviations
• Note on transliteration
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Mass media and climate change: its role, challenges and trends
• 2 The political economy of Russian mass media: state and market
• 3 Russian climate change policy: towards ‘climate pragmatism’
• 4 Russian newspapers and climate change
• 5 Mediating climate change in Russia: passing through the barriers
• 6 Conclusion
• Appendix
• Index